Ghostly Nature

What’s a 16-minute exposure look like in bright sunlight? Normally, pure white. However, an unmodified camera with an infrared filter in front can produce slightly more entertaining results.

Taken at Onaping Falls, this false-colour IR shot was taken at ISO 100, F/16 and 16 minutes. The smoothing effect on water typically doesn’t get “smoother” beyond a few seconds, and motion in the clouds will obscure sky details over a minute or so.

So, why 16 minutes? For a fun experiment!

Infrared light is invisible to human vision, so the world it reveals is often surreal, “magical” and unfamiliar. The colours in this image are false, because it’s created from light our brains cannot understand. Exploring infrared photography is quite an adventure.